


And Straight On 'Til Morning

by simplyprologue



Series: Careful the Tale You Tell (Children Will Listen) [12]
Category: The Newsroom (US TV)
Genre: Childbirth, F/M, Newborn Children, Past Child Abuse, Post-Series, Pregnancy
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-11-21
Updated: 2016-01-04
Packaged: 2018-05-02 16:07:01
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 11,582
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5254679
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/simplyprologue/pseuds/simplyprologue
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p><i>“I want a karat for each pound, Billy.”</i> The birth of Teddy McAvoy.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Second Star to the Right

**Author's Note:**

> **A/N:** I meant to write this when I finished _Paterfamilias_ a year ago, and then season 3 happened and upended a lot of what we thought was canon, and my headcanon, so the idea of writing a very Mac-centric motherhood fic got put on hold until the finale. After which I wrote _A Million Particles of Light_ as sort of reparation for Mac's lack of a narrative in season 3, and still put writing Teddy's birth on hold. Until now. A year later. Oops? 
> 
> Thank you very much to Pippa and Meg and Emily for the hand-holding. Title is obviously taken from _Peter Pan_.

“Okay, Mac? The cord is wrapped around his neck. I need you to stop pushing while I try it slip it down to his shoulders. Okay?”

It has been almost twelve hours exactly since she felt the first contraction ripple through her, ten since she hugged Charlotte tightly to her, brushed her hair into pigtails, and sent her off to nursery school for the last time as her only baby. Five hours since she entered active labor braced over the kitchen counter, Will digging his thumbs into the small of her back in an attempt to provide some sort of relief, and four since they checked into the Mt. Sinai labor and delivery ward.

And precisely twenty-six minutes since she put her feet up into the stirrups, braced herself against the bedrail and Will’s hand, and started pushing.

“What?” she gasps, lifting her head from the pillow.

Her entire body is aflame, shaking and combusting around the point at the center of her thighs.

The doctor doesn’t lift her head. “It’s called a nuchal cord—”

Mac takes a ragged breath. Then another.

“I know what it’s called!”

Inscribed on every instinct is the desire to push, to get their son _out out out_ of her body. Don’t stop, says a million years of hereditical yearning. _Don’t stop, your son needs to breathe._ But panting through the contraction, she stops, alarm klaxons ringing the signal to panic loud and clear in her head.

This is in the books, of course, and on the websites.

 _This may happen to you._ But it didn’t happen, with Charlotte. _This may happen, and these are the percentages where this complication can cause hypoxia. These are the percentages where it can be fatal. Let these numbers burn into the back of your eyeballs as the nurse wheels you to your hospital room._

But this didn’t happen, when she had Charlotte.

Fear grips her, and holds on tight. Overriding, for the briefest moment, the pain that pushes to take her frayed and sparking nerves over the edge.

“It’s wrapped twice around his neck, and it’s compressing. I need to get it down into a better position, and then you can meet your baby.” The doctor is calm and measured, and doesn’t mention the seven additional doctors and nurses who have entered the delivery room, or the decels on the monitor. “Don’t push. Breathe through the next few contractions.”

For the briefest of moments — a five second intermission between his heart pounding in his chest and locked knees spinning his thoughts into a dizzy fog and his eyes looking back where they’re needed, onto his wife’s — Will considers telling the obstetrician to go fuck herself. That it’s not allowed, she can’t just tell Mac to _stop pushing_ like it’s something easily done. But he’s noticed the flurry of activity in their room, even if Mac hasn’t.

Even if Mac won’t.

She has a hard enough job right now, without it being made harder by seeing the NICU team snapping non-latex gloves onto their hands and tying sterile aprons over their fronts.

He looks down at her.

Really looks, and it’s like he’s seeing her face for the first time. Even when Charlotte was born, he’s never seen her in this much pain.

“Hey — hey, just look at me, Mac.” Squeezing her fingers, he waits until the distant glaze on her eyes dissipates, and she focuses on him. “Just look at me. Okay? Just keep breathing. Nice and slow. Do you want me to tell you how incredibly strong you are? Because I can.” In his other hand, her leg trembles from exertion. Her muscles tense from the urge to bear down, her teeth gritting as she fights it off. “You’re almost there. You’re spectacular, okay? Just keep looking at me. I love you so much, just a little bit longer and I swear you’re gonna own my ass for the rest of my life.”

Eyes bright and bloodshot, she somehow pulls a smirk onto her face.

“I know, I know. You already own me,” he murmurs.

Her hand clenching passes excruciating and into a pleasant sort of numbness; regardless, he doesn’t care. Lips pursed, she breathes in quick little bursts. Her head lolls back, eyes squeezing shut, and she bites her bottom lip.

“Hey,” Will says, his thumb rubbing circles where his hand is bracing her leg at the knee. “Hey, look at me.” Her face turns redder than before, and he chances a look down to where the doctor is working. The concept of time has vacated his conscious — he has no idea if she told Mac to stop pushing five seconds or five minutes ago. “MacKenzie? Honey, look at me. Breathe, honey.”

A fresh sheen of sweat breaks over her forehead, but she inhales.

Will thinks he’s never been prouder.

Desperation builds in her, starting at her fingers and toes and surging inwards. Forcing her vision to clear, Will’s face appears, hovering over her. She feels the baby between her thighs, his shoulders pulling her apart at the seams as the doctor works him slowly out, unwrapping the umbilical cord from his neck once, then twice, checking for knots and compressions.

It’s the fluorescent lights, or maybe her body finally succumbing to the rigor and the intensity, but her vision again obscured by clouds of purple and white.

“Hey, hey—”

She blinks rapidly, bearing all her strength into holding onto Will’s hand and the bedrail; she threatens to shake apart at the exertion. The doctor lifts her head for a fraction of a second, but Mac doesn’t notice. She’s looking at the trepidation etched on Will’s face, and the tenacity — she doesn’t know what he sees on her own face, but a flash of admiration crosses his features and he leans down to brush a kiss across her sweat-slick brow.

“You’re doing great, Mac,” the obstetrician says, and Mac hears it as if she were underwater. “Almost there. Push slowly, now. Nice and slow. Just like that, Mac.”

Will watches the doctor somersault the pink and blotchy newborn out from MacKenzie’s shuddering body, careful to keep the cord tangled around his shoulders from tightening any further. Mac gives one exhausted moan, and then falls back against the bed, eyes shut.

“Mom, meet your son,” their doctor says.

His limbs are still furled like he was in the womb, face scrunched with displeasure.

The doctor holds the baby up for their approval. Will looks back to where Mac’s head is resting against the pillows, her chest heaving as she tries to catch her breath.

“He’s not crying,” she mumbles, eyes flying open. Her fingers refuse to unclamp from the railing as she tries and fails to reach for their son. If they would just give them to her, let her put him on her chest. “Doctor—”

Another doctor clamps the cord, and cuts it.

MacKenzie tries to protest, her words tamped off by another contraction and a rush of blood and amniotic fluid painting the insides of her thighs and the hospital pad under her. When it passes and she’s breathless still, she manages to let go of Will’s hand, pushing him towards where the baby is crowded by a halo of nurses and doctors for examination.

Her pelvis feels as if it’s been ripped in half from front to back, and she’s pretty sure she has tearing this time that she didn’t the first time around — but a flood of endorphins enters her bloodstream, quieting the worst of the searing agony in her midsection.

“Go, go.” Swallowing hard, she lifts her head as much as she can, trying to catch a glimpse of a vernix-covered leg or flailing arm. “I’m fine.”

The baby is put under the heated lights. Curled up tight and red-faced, he’s less eager to prove his lungs than his sister was when she was born. A nurse stretches a striped hat over his head, another rubs at his body with a soft towel. A cold stethoscope is placed on his chest, a hand pinches his fingers and toes.

Will stands a foot from the bassinet, wondering if he should intercede.

His voice always roused their son to kicking and punching when he was in Mac’s stomach. His son must know him, right? Breath catching in his throat, he looks back to where Mac is being tended by OB nurses massaging her abdomen.

He catches her gaze.

“Talk to him,” she pleads, so softly that he can see her words but not hear them.

There is too much desperation inside him for anything else to take root. It’s a desperate yearning just for the baby to _breathe_ , a yearning so strong and overwhelmingthat the neuroses that he feared would swallow him up are left lock-jawed and toothless.

This is his son, and he just needs to hear him cry.

He leans down over the edge of the clear bassinet, careful to keep out of the nurses’ way, and cups his hand over the top of the baby’s head. “Come on kiddo, give Mom something to work with.”

A nurse pricks the baby’s heel for blood typing — fists waving, the baby gives out a tiny squall.

“That’s it, come on.” A shaky exhale rattles out of his chest; he fits the crescent of his thumbnail into the baby’s palm, pressing down until his hand wraps around his finger and holds on tightly. And with that, the baby seems to awaken, dark eyes slitting open and squinting into the harsh lights above him. “Hi, I’m here. I’m right here. Daddy’s got you.”

Then at last, the baby begins to scream.

Riding out another contraction, Mac allows herself to slump against the pillows. Eyes closing, she ignores the tears of relief sliding down her cheeks. Tiredly, she reaches up and grasps the bedrails, startling when she feels someone wrap another hospital band at her wrist.

 _McHale, Baby Boy. DOB: 10/21/16. Mother: McHale, MacKenzie._ Another is put on Will’s wrist, another on the baby’s ankle — marking them all as a part of the same whole.

Sniffling, she reorients herself emotionally, trying to stem the steady tide of postpartum hormones already flowing through her. One of the neonatal nurses in her pastel scrubs lifts the baby — she and Will still haven’t settled on a name, going turn for turn over _Duncan, Andrew, Zachary, Edward, Liam_ — from the bassinet to the scale. “Ten pounds, two ounces, and almost twenty-three inches. Someone get this woman a medal,” another nurse announces, and the room laughs.

“How long did she go?”

“Almost forty-two weeks.”

Managing a watery laugh herself, Mac dabs at her eyes. “How about you just give me my kid back instead of the medal?”

It’s only half a joke — and she knows Will can tell, not that she thinks he’d would keep their son all to himself anyway. Not when their son has spent the past nine months inside her; she’s not equipped to handle him being so far as across the room from her, not yet. Another contraction sweeps through her, and a nurse she’s coming to deeply dislike presses down again just above the top of her pelvis. But the pain disappears when Will scoops their crying baby in a receiving blanket, and cradles him gently against his chest.

Beaming, he comes back to her bedside with a careful gait, minding his steps with the sort of self-consciousness only the parent of a newborn has.

“Can’t get him bronzed,” he teases.

“I want a _karat_ for each pound, Billy.” The retort slides mindlessly off her tongue as Will eases the baby into her arms; her thoughts are immediately captured by the squirming infant. “Oh,” she breathes, tears washing away her vision. “Hi, honey.”

“He’s all nice and pink now.”

“Yeah.”

“Ten fingers, ten toes. I counted twice.”

She counts them too, her index finger glancing over his hands and feet. Ten perfect fingers, ten perfect toes, two ears, one nose. And a tongue, darting out between his lips because he’s realized it was something he could do with his mouth, she’s certain, giggling and crying and all of the rest of it.

“Hello, sweetheart. I’m Mum.”

“I’m Dad. We’re already acquainted.” Will leans down, burying his nose in Mac’s crown. Her ponytail is a mess, hair reeking of sweat. He couldn’t possibly care, kissing the top of her head as he traces his fingers over his son’s cheek. “Mom’s probably the more important one, right now.” His other hand moves to the ties at the back of her hospital gown. “Do you want me to—?”

Attempting to gulp down a sob, she nods. “Yeah.”

Opening the blanket and pushing her hospital gown to her waist, she rests the baby on her chest. When she lays his head over her heart he begins to settle, his cries quieting down into restless squeaks.

“Look at him.”

“I am.”

Unlocking the bedrail and sliding it down out of his way, Will sidles himself closer to Mac and the baby in her arms. His fingers fan over her back, stroking damp skin, before he wraps his arms around her shoulders to help keep her upright. Startled in amazement, he kisses her again, this time on her temple.

_I love you, I love you, I love you._

Contentment dawning across her face, she tenderly pushes up the cap covering the baby’s head to reveal a shock of blonde hair, yellow like corn silk, sweeping across delicate pink skin. “Oh, look at all his hair. That explains the heartburn,” she sighs. Craning her head slightly, she tries to get a better look at his face — it bears the telltale marks of a quick birth, red markings on his brow and jaw and cheeks. Swollen and truth be told, a little bit squashed, his nose is nothing more than a mere smudge in the middle of his features. But his eyes are open, and alert, and a clear dark blue, looking up at his parents with a certain sort of assertive helplessness. “Oh… I don’t think he’s a Duncan. Or an Andy.”

“Not a Sammy, or a Ben.” Will tilts his head, as if a different angle will yield a better answer.

“This was so much easier with Charlotte.”

“Well, we could name him Teddy.”

He thinks their son might not be an Edward, but MacKenzie has scruples about not giving their children nicknames on their birth certificates.

“Or Billy.”

“The world does not need another Will McAvoy.”

“I wouldn’t mind,” she replies softly, and hums, rocking their son gently. They’ve broached this particular option before, each time at her own behest. And each time Will looks deeply uncomfortable, and changes the subject. “You really don’t want your son to be named after you?”

He shrugs, lips twisting into a grimace. “It feels… weird.”

Mostly, he keeps envisioning his life had his mother named him after his own father. When they tell Charlotte about Charlie, he’s pointing to a picture of the man, telling stories about how Charlie saved his life, how he saved his career, how he loved him when he thought no one would. How Charlie saved Mommy, too, and helped her put everything back together again. How Charlie protected them, and made it possible for her to be born.

But he himself — he’s untested. He can’t give his son a name he might end up spending his life trying to run from.

“You have no qualms about naming him after my father,” Mac quietly contests, “you had no qualms about naming a baby after Charlie, who is the closest thing to a _real father_ you ever had, why don’t you want to name our son—”

“I cause enough trouble as it is. I don’t wanna saddle a kid to a name and have to put up with the shadow of my Wikipedia article for the rest of his life, heading _Professional Career,_ subheading _Subpoena, Contempt of Court, and Incarceration,_ subheading _Operation Genoa Story Retraction,_ subheading _Political Controversy._ ” With an edifying breath, he fights to keep a tremulous waver out of his voice, instead stroking the baby’s head as he squirms himself down to Mac’s breast to eat. “And that’s before we get to the clusterfuck of my personal life before I pulled my head out of my ass and—”

“Billy, none of that matters. We were there.” Her voice is tired, but fierce, as she helps the baby latch on to her nipple. “We’ll be the ones to tell him the story.”

Her milk won’t come in for a few more days, and she enjoys the idea of nursing her son without her breasts being engorged, knowing that before the week is out she’ll be gritting her teeth waiting for him to wake up for a feeding. But right now it’s a slight pain at her breast as she and the baby try to get acclimated to each other, and a heady hit of oxytocin and dopamine. Then, predictably enough, another contraction.

The delivery room has cleared of the NICU personnel, and the obstetrician remains between Mac’s legs, preparing instruments for sutures and to collect the remnants of the afterbirth.

“Mac, it’s time to—” she says, with a slight touch to one of her blood-coated thighs.

Mac sighs.

“You’re not visiting your _sins_ upon our son,” she mutters, bracing herself. Then catches sight of the vaguely stricken expression on his face, and bites her bottom lip. “We’ll keep considering other names. You really think he looks like a Teddy?”

Will wraps his arms all the way around her, holding the baby up against her. “I think he looks like you.”

“That’s bullshit.”

His mouth, at least, looks just like Will’s.

With a warning from the obstetrician to not strain herself, Mac delivers the placenta, slumping backwards once the last of her work is done. More exhausted than she perhaps expected to feel, she lets her head roll back to rest on Will’s forearm. Licking her lips, she tastes the salt of dried sweat ringing her mouth.

The doctor clears the blood and tissue away, handing the metal basin it landed in off to a nurse for disposal.

“How many stitches, do you think?” Mac asks, now very eager to get her feet down from the stirrups.

Reaching for a syringe of lidocaine, the doctor assesses her.

“Two. I might be able to fit a third one in there. It’s just some first degree tearing.” Mac winces as the needle goes in. “You won’t be sitting on a donut, or anything. You did great. Your body did everything it was supposed to do. Just focus on your beautiful baby, this’ll be over in a few minutes and then we can see about getting you settled in one of the suites.”

Unlike the pure anxiety that came with being left alone in a room with Charlotte without so much as a pamphlet or troubleshooting guide — never more had Will wondered why you need a license to drive a car but not to have a baby because someone should have at least administered a written exam before handing Charlotte off to him — this time around they’re both impatient to have their son to themselves, to have a room to themselves that isn’t filled with monitors and machines and an endless array of strangers. But they’ll have to be impatient a little while longer, let the world in for another hour or two.

Moving Mac’s head to the crook of his neck, Will brushes her bangs away from her forehead.

“I love you.”

His thumb stays on her temple, rubbing slow circles; she releases the tension she didn’t even realize she was holding. And as burning sensation between her legs slowly giving way to a pervading numbness, she’s finally able to focus fully on the nursing infant on her chest.

“I love you too,” she whispers.

As always, he has a little trouble understanding just how much.

 

* * *

 

He cannot think of a single time in their lives where she looked more beautiful than this, except the last time she held one of their newborn babies in her arms. Not that she would agree, but Will thinks she might not have the capacity to understand the magnificent allure of looking at the mother of your children in the moments after she’s given birth. They would see the same things — her glasses fallen halfway down her nose, her swollen bloodshot eyes, her overly-flushed cheeks and cracked lips, her hair askew in every way possible — but whereas she would be looking in the mirror and seeing the mess that’s been made of herself, he’s looking at the woman who just went through twelve hours of excruciating labor after nine months of pregnancy to deliver their son.

Eyes half shut, lips pulled into a self-satisfied smile, she rocks the baby in her arms.

He takes another picture on his phone.

“Can’t you let me shower first?” Her eyes flicker towards him, bemused. “No one wants to see this.”

“I do.”

With a little huff, she shakes her head.

“What time is it?”

“Half-past eight,” he answers, checking his watch. “Why? Do you want me to turn on the TV? I’m sure Sloan is doing fine, it’s been a slow news day.”

“No, I was wondering if Charlotte would be in bed. But I’m sure Leona and Nancy have her good and sugared up.”

Not that she was ever but rarely in the same country as her grandparents, but Mac has it under good authority that this is what grandmothers supposed to do. Biologically-related ones, or otherwise. And considering their dearth of local blood relations and an overabundance of friends who work until eight o’clock at night and much later, she can hardly complain, especially when they offer to pick their daughter up from preschool to keep for the night so they have one less thing to worry about while at the hospital.

“Want me to call Leona?” Will asks, extracting his phone from his pocket.

“Why don’t you FaceTime her? That way Charlotte can actually see who’s been kicking back at her the past few months.”

“Leona has FaceTime?” he asks, his expression turning into one of pure confusion. “What is—?”

Mac rolls her eyes. “Honey, you have FaceTime.”

“Wait.” He’s only had this phone for a year. “Do I really?”

“Here, give it to me.”

She snatches the iPhone from his hands, adjusting the baby onto one arm so she can scroll through his contacts.

“You just said you didn’t want people seeing you like this,” Will splutters, sitting down on the bed near her feet. Mostly though, he’s worried that she’s just going to utilize her possession of his phone to go through his pictures and delete the ones she deems unworthy. It’s not like he’s going to have them framed for his desk, or anything.

“This is different, Leona and Nancy both have children of their own, and I really don’t think Charlotte is going to care what I look like.” There is also the fact that none of the three people she just listed are her employees. “Then after that we can call the control room during a break, since sure as shit none of _them_ are going to see me like this.”

“There it is.” Moving closer, he bends over the baby between them to brush her hair back from her face and push her glasses back up to the bridge of her nose. “Are we going to have them announce it on the air, or…?”

“Well, he doesn’t have a name.”

“You really don’t like Teddy?”

“It’s not that I don’t like Teddy, I’d just prefer to name him after you, Billy.” They gaze down at their son, who is currently very engaged trying to fit his hands under his chin. Mac sighs; he’s only thirty minutes old. He doesn’t need a name yet. She gives Will a small smile. “We can do a press release tomorrow afternoon. Give the weeklies a full day before they go to print, see what stories they manage to come up with this time.”

Lifting an eyebrow, she presses the call button on the app and holds the phone out in front of her.

“Well, this time I wasn’t in a car driving at breakneck speed up I-95 North from DC in a blizzard, so I doubt they’re going to get very far,” he mutters, trying to get himself in frame, and then deciding to take the phone from her and hold it himself.

She adjusts the baby in her arms yet again.

“Oh, I wouldn’t doubt the collective imagination of the tabloid press’ finest.” After all, there was speculation that Jim was Charlotte’s father after it somehow got to Nina Howard that he had been the one with her in labor and delivery before Will arrived.

The phone chimes, and the video screen loads, revealing a Leona Lansing who is trying to not look overly-eager.

Mac laughs, giving the camera a stilted wave from where her hand fits under the baby.

“Hi, Leona! We’ve got someone here for Charlotte to meet, if she’s still awake.”

There’s a flurry of activity in the Skinner living room outside beyond what little they can see — a plush leather couch, a mirror, a grandfather clock — on the screen. In short order, the Skinner women have piled themselves onto the couch next to Leona. All cooing and congratulating, they remark on the baby’s size and appearance, until Charlotte in a pair of footed Star Wars pajamas climbs into the center of it all, finding a place perched between Sophie and Leona’s laps. Eyes going wide, she pitches forward. Will and Mac laugh as their screen is filled with a blur of honey blonde hair and nondescript forehead as she tries to get herself as close to Leona’s phone as possible.

“Is that really my little brother?” she gasps.

Will angles the camera to give her a better view of the baby, who despite having eaten his fill from Mac’s breast, is trying to figure out how to shove both his hands inside his mouth at once. “Yup.”  

“He’s so… small,” Charlotte whispers, leaning forward again. “And red. He looks like he’s angry.”

“You started out this way too, honey,” he says. “Even smaller, actually.”

She gives them both a skeptical look.

“Even smaller?”

“He’s a little over ten pounds. You were only seven and a half.” And was no longer than his forearm, Will remembers. He would walk the length of the apartment with her tucked into his side, rocking her back and forth while praying that she would settle back down to sleep before her next feeding. Her brother might be a too big to do that with.

Not for the first time, Will marvels at the feat Mac has just accomplished.

“And you looked pretty angry too,” she says, voice as soft as her face, a smile crinkling the corners of her eyes. “You weren’t too happy about having to come out of my belly where you were nice and warm and cozy.”

Charlotte giggles, framing her cheeks with her hands. “Wow. He’s looking at me! Look Mommy, he’s looking at me!”

“He is. He can hear you.”

After cleaning her thighs and abdomen, a nurse wrapped her in heated blankets to stave off the effects of a womb’s worth of blood loss. But for the first time since the birth, Mac feels completely warm, looking at her older child looking fondly at her baby brother — she, after all, remembers her own reactions to her three sisters’ entrances to the world.

They were not so enthusiastic.

Of course, she realizes, Charlotte may be less excited about having a baby in the house after a few weeks of enduring him taking up so much of Mommy and Daddy’s time and energy.

“What’s his name?” she asks.

“Mommy and I haven’t figured out what his name is yet.” Will smiles nervously. “We’ll have one when I come pick you up in the morning, though.”

He hopes.

“What about Elmo?”

“Not quite on the list, honey.” With a wry smile, Mac looks down at the baby and steals one of his hands away from his mouth. His fingers curl around her thumb.

“Christopher Robin?”

Will pauses.

“You know, Christopher isn’t a bad—”

“Daddy and I have it down to a few different names, honey.” That is, she _knows_ what name is going to end up on the birth certificate, she just needs a few more hours to convince Will of the oncoming reality. “We just wanted to call and let you see him real quick, before you go to bed. I need you to sleep really well tonight, because Daddy will be there really, really early to get you. Okay honey?”

Charlotte nods, a mess of blonde curls swinging into her face. “I love you, Mommy.”

“I love you too, baby.”

“I’m still a baby?”

“You’ll always be my baby,” Mac murmurs, rocking the newest of her babies in her arm. “Now be good, and go to bed.”

Will brings his index and middle fingers to his mouth, and then touches them to the camera. It’s not that he doesn’t know she’ll be fine, because Charlotte has slept over at the Skinners’ before, slept at Maggie and Jim’s, slept at Sloan and Don’s — he supposes it’s that he doesn’t quite know how this is supposed to go. He doesn’t remember when Liz was born, and when Mickey and Fiona were born, he was already old enough to understand the circumstances, the house, they were living in.

Charlotte has none of those worries.

“I love you,” he says.

Her smile wide, revealing oddly-spaced and crooked baby teeth, she brings both of her hands to her lips before flinging them out wide with a theatrical _mwah!_ “Love you, Daddy.”

Waggling her fingers to them, Sophie collects Charlotte to her side, and stands. Faintly, from off-screen, she sings a silly song about bedtimes. _Come along, Charlie girl._ Katy, as if remembering something suddenly, also stands, chasing her sister with a reminder about Ned’s old bedroom and a trick about the bedrail. Leona and Nancy watch them go, and then turn back to the screen.

Leona grins in a way that is slightly concerning.

“You look like you need a drink, McAvoy. You know, I got half the waiting room drunk the morning she was born.” This many years later, many have heard the story of Jim Harper getting good and drunk on bourbon at 4 AM in the maternity ward waiting room as people took turns going back to meet newly-born Charlotte. Will, for showmanship, groans — but he’s far too happy to mind. “That was a good time. You gonna break out the cigars tomorrow?”

“Why don’t you come over here,” he suggests, glancing down at the baby, and smirks. “We’ll get drunk on champagne on the hospital balcony again and you can pay off an orderly to let us smoke.”

“I’ll bring Becca and my friend here.” Leona jabs her finger in Nancy’s direction.

Mac snorts. “And there’s the tabloid story.”

Eyeing Leona carefully, Nancy raises her eyebrows high towards her hairline. “Or maybe we’ll just stick to the newsroom.”

Leona waves her off.

“You should take Charlotte with you, have her pass out the cigars for you. When those wretched twins were born, Reese had his father’s legal team tossing in tip money in the box for him as he walked around the boardroom,” she muses wistfully. “Had half his first semester of Wharton paid for by the time the cigars were gone.”

“Oh God.” Will and Mac can both imagine that Charlotte would be all too happy to be a cigar girl, the center of attention.

Mac has a feeling Will is going to have her do it.

“MacKenzie, you look great,” Nancy says in a valiant effort to derail Leona.

“I really don’t, but I appreciate the sentiment.”

“McMac, you are positively glowing.” Leona, of course, cannot be stopped. “Now, William, go get her a cheeseburger the size of her head or something, she deserves it after pushing out that adorable whopper.”

Almost on cue, the baby lets out a quiet mewl, distracting both of his parents. Tucking his blankets more tightly around him, Mac shushes him, jostling him against her chest. Should they put him in clothes? Does he need socks? Or is he just hungry again, or did he unlatch before he was full?

“What time will you be here tomorrow, Will?” Nancy asks. “No rush, Charlie’s welcome to stay as long as you need her to.”

“I’m aiming for seven.” He smoothes out a wrinkle in the baby’s cap, and then looks up again. “I doubt I’ll sleep tonight.”

Neither of them did, for a full twenty-four hours after Charlotte was born, a bloodrush of adrenaline and for him, several extra-large cups of coffee.  

Nancy smiles warmly, taking the phone from Leona. “Alright you two. Congratulations!”

“Goodnight—”

“Bye! Thank you—”

The call disconnects. Mac tries to take the phone back from Will, who holds it out of her reach.

“What?”

“Don’t try to erase any of the pictures.”

Sighing, she turns her hand so her palm is reaching out to him. Still, he looks at her defensively.

(It’s not like she has a problem with Will having pictures of her after twelve hours of labor and thirty minutes of pushing.

God knows if that’s what he wants on his phone then he’s earned it, especially after the last few minutes where she laid terrified on her back, wondering if their son would choke to death before he was even born and all she could see was his face, hovering over hers, speaking to her until she could achieve calm.)

“I was going to call the control room, like I said earlier,” she deadpans. “It’s forty-two minutes past the hour, if they’re running on schedule they’re at a break.”

“How do you know that?”

“I read the final rundown while you were getting me ice chips.”

She had to do _something_ to stay sane, and making Jim needlessly rearrange the B block seemed like just the thing at the time.

A look of disbelief crosses Will’s face, but is quickly replaced by a begrudging acceptance that if MacKenzie could run a fifteen person bicoastal conference call from the bathroom floor in between bouts of morning sickness, she could probably memorize a rundown while seven centimeters dilated.

Adjusting the wriggling baby, slides down against the mattress. It’s not terribly comfortable, but her back is starting to protest her being upright. “Or you can call in, if you really don’t believe me.”

Muttering something about cunning being heritable, Will dials Jim on speed dial, and puts the call on speaker.

Expecting to half to wait more than one ring, considering the verbal and informational melee of the control room in the middle of a newscast, he absently puts a hand on Mac’s arm, rubbing warmth through the thin hospital gown. There’s a fleece robe in her overnight bag, but he suspects she’s waiting until she showers to put it on. Catching her eye, he fondly kisses her cheek.

Which is the moment Jim picks up.

“Oh fuck — everyone shut the fuck up, would you? I can’t hear them if you all keep shouting at me to pick up my phone,” he grumbles, then drastically changes his tone. “Hey, do we have news?”

“I’d hope so, you’re supposed to be producing it right now,” Mac manages to get in under her breath.

Jim makes a faint noise of protest.

“She’s just mad because she didn’t break my hand this time around,” Will says, tugging the blanket up higher, to her waist.

Mac smiles sweetly. “I still can, honey.”

“Wait, so—”

Jim, adorably confused as ever, cuts himself off.

“Ten pounds, two ounces, and twenty-two inches long. Little no-name McAvoy made his appearance just past the hour, he and I are doing just swimmingly.” Her voice catches in her throat, and she’s content to blame hormones for the sudden rush of gratitude she feels. It’s probably best to examine her feelings on the near-miss they had _later_ , when her baby isn’t quite so new, and she’s able to let him go for more than a few moments at a time. Sniffling, she blinks rapidly. “Even if he does have a large head, like his father.”

“He’s here!” Jim shouts. “And he’s — wait, I need the vital statistics again."

A raucous cheer rises up in the background, loud enough that the baby gives a tiny startled squeak. Smiling, and overwhelmed, Mac pats the blankets atop him until he settles again.

“Wait, shit you guys, we’ve only got ninety seconds stop trying to steal my—”

They end up on speaker, promising to send pictures in a staff email, before having to be shuffled off again after Sloan shouts loudly enough into her microphone, demanding to know what the hell is going on.

“Visitors tomorrow,” they say.

In return, they receive a promise that their son will be very well toasted in Hang Chews after the show. “Incredibly well,” Tess assures them. “Like no baby before him.”

“Though, Jim, when Charlie was born—”

“God, are we never letting that go?”

“Never.”

After they hang up, a nurse comes in with fresh blankets and the information that the suite won’t be ready for another hour, the hour of the birth being at the unfortunate time of a shift change in nurses. Which is when Mac decides that she, as Leona suggested she has won the right to, would like a cheeseburger as big as her head.

“No onions,” she reminds Will.

“No naming him before I come back,” he reminds her in turn, checking his jeans for his wallet and shrugging into his long-abandoned coat.

“Listen honey,” Mac teases, “they give me paperwork, I fill it out. It’s my signature that needs to be on it.”

Grumbling, he braces himself on the mattress to meet her lips in a tender kiss. Then, he presses another kiss, even more tender, to the baby's head. 

"I'll have my phone," he says. 

"I'll call, Billy. But we're fine."

Long after he’s gone, Mac sits alone in the room, looking down at her son. His face is familiar, and her own changes to fit the sleepy, ponderous expression he wears. Humming adjacent notes without any sort of melody, she rocks him in her arms and smiles, remembering a time when Will’s name was the only thing keeping her alive.

(About three years.)

Why shouldn’t they give it to him, too?


	2. And Straight On 'Til Morning

“I really can just _walk_. It’s barely two hundred yards, and standing in an elevator for ten seconds.”

“Hon, while I respect your general tendency to be, well, Wonder Woman—”

“I just gave birth, I’m not an invalid.” She does. In a few days she’ll feel like she survived a particularly atrocious car wreck, but for the moment the wondrous hormones that her reproductive system is ordering to be marched through her bloodstream are doing their job. Cradling the baby against her chest, she squints up at Will. “Isn’t it your people who have been squatting in cornfields for centuries, popping out babies, and then going right back to tending the farm with the kid strapped to their backs?”

“I would hardly say centuries. The corn thing is more recent than that.” Kneeling, he picks her slippers up off the floor and puts them on her sock-clad feet. “Please just use the wheelchair?”

Swinging her legs off the hospital bed, she places her feet on the floor, eyeing the wheelchair with a degree of distrust.

“You put the _hell_ in helicopter sometimes.”

Like he doesn’t know it. “I love you very, very much.”

Which is how Mac winds up in the wheelchair, staring down at the baby boy in her arms as an orderly pushes her down the hall so that she can attempt to ignore the intubation kit and other resuscitation devices on the cart outside the labor and delivery room’s door. _Healthy mum, healthy baby._ She reminds herself that’s what matters, that’s what they have. The rest, she hopes, won’t be revisited in her dreams in the coming weeks as the hormones continue to ravage her system.

In the elevator Will’s hand lands on her shoulder, his thumb moving over her collarbone. Her bag is slung across his back, and he moves it carefully out of his way so he can stand closer to her. She smiles, reaching up to fold her hand around his, and squeezes. Sighing softly, still looking down at the baby, she leans her head to rest against his arm.

They reach the maternity wing, and the elevator dings, doors sliding open.

She doesn’t go of his hand.

Will catalogs the moment in his mind, tucking it away with other moments where he’s found himself to be impossibly happy.

Even as they happen with increasingly frequency he still finds himself desperate to dictate these fragile tremulous things to memory as if they could so easily slip away — they could, he knows. They could, they can, they do from other people. They have slipped away from him before. This could too; it could all slip away, even if he refuses to let it happen.

The universe is absurd, so he charts the mad little moments where he’s allowed to be happy.

_He has a son._

A nurse settles them into the private maternity suite that they’ve had booked for months, and Mac notices the packet of paper on the rolling table next to the bed. When Charlotte was born it was almost eight hours later by the time a nurse had assembled the paperwork to generate the birth certificate, but she figures this must be one of the perks of having your baby at the beginning of the night shift.

Briefly she considers an ambush, but then relegates the sheaf of papers to the side.

The sheets on the bed in the suite are much softer than in the birthing room, washed in regular hospital detergent rather than in load after load of scalding hot water and bleach. She’s acutely aware of the sweat dried on her own skin, and any other circumstances would be showering before getting in-between clean sheets, but…

Untying the neck of her hospital gown, she lies the baby back on her chest, settling into the mattress.

“Are you warm enough?”

The little body on top of her stretches and then contracts, fitting himself over the curve of her breasts. Gently, she moves him into the crook of her arm, adjusting him closer to her nipple when she sees him trying to fit his hands into his mouth.

“I’m a little cold,” she murmurs, smiling down at the rooting infant.

Will kisses her forehead, and gets off the bed.

She guides the baby’s head with her hand, inhaling steadily as he latches on, lips flanged out against her skin. He’s so much bigger than Charlotte was; she wonders if she’ll be able to keep up with what he needs to eat. Already, he’s still trying to get his fill. Sighing again, she reaches for the water bottle on the rolling table, uncapping it one-handedly and bringing it to her mouth — it reminds her of the one good thing of having an IV during Charlotte’s birth, she hadn’t gotten thirsty at all, even if her face and hands did swell to unnatural proportions.

Wincing, she feels a tingling, pulling sensation as the baby begins to drink, and then a strong contraction. With a squirm, she curls her toes against the sheets. After a minute, it lets off, and she’s left with a dull cramping pain as the baby continues to nurse.

Will returns from where he’s been sorting through her things in the living room of the suite.

Carefully, he tucks around her legs her favorite throw from home, a soft plush velvet blanket that has lived on their couch since Charlotte’s infancy.

“He looks like you,” he says, grasping the baby’s foot.

She looks up at him, amused at this game. “You said that about Charlotte.”

Grinning widely, he kisses her again, capturing her lips this time. It’s meant to be quick, perfunctory, but melts into something else. “She does look like you,” he says simply. Still grinning, he leans his forehead against hers and then pulls back, placing a kiss on the tip of her nose.

Scoffing, she rolls her eyes.

The baby’s eyes are alert, following the voices of his parents. Will notices, and feels a rush of warmth in his chest. Leaning over the infant, he runs his finger up the arch of the baby’s foot, smiling when his arch flexes and his toes bend. A pair of calm dark eyes focus on him for a few seconds, and then close. “Hey, stay awake. Mom and I aren’t done with you yet.”

Mac snorts, brushing her fingers over the top of the baby’s head, under his hat.

“Okay, mostly it’s Mom. But I’m along for the ride,” Will amends.

Jaw working furiously as he sucks at her breast, the baby’s eyes open again, looking at nowhere in particular. Her fingers trace downwards, over the dusty vernix dried on his face and hands, and she wonders what she’s done to deserve such perfection. She never planned to be happy, to be sure. Never expected that she and Will would be together, let alone married, that she would be employed, let alone the President of ACN, that she would be able to get pregnant and give birth not just once, but twice, even if both times they weren’t really trying, if only because she was afraid of what it would mean to fail.

But they have a daughter, and now a son.

“What are you thinking about?”

Walking into the newsroom for the first time six years ago after staying sober for an entire week, and seeing his face for the first time after going through hell and back. Then his face, later, as she tried not to cry in the elevator lobby.

_Well it’s yours, for a week._

It was hers, for three years. Then they didn’t _need_ it to be hers.

“You really don’t want to name him after yourself?”

“You don’t want to name him after your dad?” he asks, looking deeply uncertain.

Of course, she thinks. He'd run himself ragged and run the risk of long term incarceration and god only knows what else to earn her approval, but now that she's trying to show him that he earned it, years ago, he continues to insist against it.

“My dad was a lot of great things, but he wasn’t the man who saved me from complete self-destruction not just once, but twice,” she murmurs, pushing the baby’s cap up again, puzzling her fingers through inch-long strands of fine blonde hair. Blood and greasy vernix has dried against his scalp; he’ll need a bath. Carefully, she looks at up Will, and the confused expression on his face. “What? Only you can say melodramatic emotional shit? Besides, _you’re_ his father. I want to name him after you.”

“What if he hates me?”

Letting her head fall back against the pillow, she squints at him. “Does _Charlotte_ hate you?”

“She still has time,” he mumbles. “My dad didn’t set out to make us hate him.”

“He didn’t set out to _love you,_ either.”

“My dad—” He stops himself. It’s hard, trying to work through this while gazing upon his own son, so tiny and new, without blemish or damage. He’s barely even touched his son yet, hasn’t held him except to bring him to Mac — he’s almost afraid to. “It’s not just about what he did or didn’t—”

Mac is unwilling to let the conversation proceed in this direction.

“Will, I have just spent ten hours in drug-free labor giving birth to our baby who sure as hell isn’t fitting into any newborn anything. I am tired, I am sore, I am bleeding clots the size of my liver, and I am not going to go nine rounds with you about this again,” she says, lips forming her words with a sense of rehearsed deliberateness. They are rehearsed, to a degree. For months, she’s been thinking them while listening to Will’s rambling insecurities. “Our son is not going to hate you. Your relationship with your father is not a reflection on you, or our family. You are a wonderful father and the man I love, even if right now you are driving me mad.”

Which is to say, her patience has run out.

“You _really_ want to name him after me?” He tries to hide the look of discomfort he _knows_ is tugging at his features. Arguing with MacKenzie may be a common event in his life, just one typically revolving around tile colors and whether something should be in the A block or B and whether it’s strictly necessary to wait until Charlotte is asleep to wash her loved-to-death security blanket.

She sighs, again. “Does it really bother you that much?”

“Yes—” he begins to answer.

But her question was more of rhetorical vaulting point than any sort of actual query.

“You’re the one who’s going to teach him how to be a good man,” she continues, brow pinching in consternation. “And, you know, for all of this _you own me_ talk—”

“But name him what you want,” he finishes before she can really get going, grimacing.

“Really?”

“You’re the one who gave birth,” he concedes, bracing himself. “You should have naming rights. And you do own me. So… you name him.”

It’s a calculated gamble. He’s handed the decision to her, but not actually agreed with her. There is no incontrovertible proof that it will lead to Mac’s conscience directing her towards a more mutually favored name, but he thinks it should at the least steer her away from the notion of naming their son after him.

“It’s a bit bigger than choosing the laminate for the kitchen, you know.”

The baby’s eating slows, one of his hands sleepily flailing up out of the blankets, his fingers sprawling over her breast. Her face softens.

“You can’t change your mind four times, either.”

He thinks he has her convinced.

“Okay,” she says, gently but with conviction.

Then pulls the rolling desk towards her, takes the pen in her hand, locates the line on the paperwork that she’s looking for, and writes _William McAvoy._

This is not what Will expected.

“Wait—”

“You can pick his middle name.” It’s a dismissal, even if she’s the one standing up. Slowly, perhaps, lifting the newly-named infant onto her shoulder and gingerly swinging her legs over the side of the bed, but standing up nevertheless. “I’m going to finally take a shower. You’ll need to burp him.”

With little to no ceremony, she places their son in his arms.

Sparing a wry grin for the gobsmacked expression he’s wearing, she manages to almost _flounce_ to the bathroom, shutting the door behind her with a sense of finality.

Blinking hard, Will looks at the birth certificate paperwork, the nurse’s handwriting indicating birth date and time and weight for the Department of Vital Statistics, and then MacKenzie’s blockier script. Then he looks down at his son, carefully and slowly adjusting him until his cheek is resting against his chest.

He’d forgotten how small newborns are — holding him like this, he barely feels like any weight at all. One small mistake, even an unintentional one, could kill him. His thumb and forefinger rub over the tiny indents where fragile neck and weak spine meet unjoined skull, massaging lightly. Yawning, the baby squirms against him, arms and legs attempting to curl back together as if he was still inside his mother.

Will watches him.

Then he picks up the pen MacKenzie left atop the table, and fills in the box she left empty indicating their son’s middle name. In the bathroom, Mac turns the shower on, and opens the glass door to step inside. He waits until he hears the door shut again, and then starts bouncing the baby against his shoulder, forgoing a burp cloth out of pure exhaustion.

He needs to put on a clean shirt anyway.

“Hi, I’m Dad. The guy Mom named you after,” he says, after the baby — he can’t bring himself to call his son _Billy_ or whatever it is Mac has in mind, probably not until she calls him that a good ten or twenty times — lets out a small sound and starts to settle himself. “I guess… we should go over a few things.”

Nestled against his chest, the baby curls up tighter until he fits in the stretch between Will’s fingertips and the heel of his palm, his eyes scrunching closed.

“Are you cold? I know, Mom’s gone. But she needs to clean herself up, kiddo. I know you had a rough day, but I think we can agree she had a tougher go of it. So maybe… okay.” Carefully, he stands, and lays the baby in the bassinet, cringing at the small mewling cry his absence causes. Rubbing the tiredness from his eyes, he rummages through Mac’s bag for the newborn clothes they brought with them, but chooses instead the cream colored three-to-six month bodysuit they packed, and a yellow hat.

Taking a deep breath, he stands over the bassinet, watching his son kick and unfurl his limbs now freed from the receiving blanket. He seems to appreciate the freedom, but not the shock of cold air. “So, First of all, your middle name is Edward. That was Mom’s Dad’s name. He was a good guy — I liked him a lot — and a knight, like the kind of all the stories we’ll be reading you. He liked me, which was… and he would have loved you. You would have been his first grandson.”

The bodysuit is soft expensive cotton, and a hand-me-down from Charlotte. The hat is cashmere, a gift from Leona, and new. He notices a box of wipes in the open shelved compartment of the hospital bassinet, and after a moment of debate, takes one and warms it between his hands before gently wiping the powdery residue of birth off of the baby’s pink and white splotched skin.

Tummy, shoulders, legs, feet. Carefully around the tied off umbilical cord. Arms, hands, delicate fingers and toes. He counts them again, for the sake of due diligence. Then rounded cheeks, tender head, and oily hair.

The baby’s mewling cry turns into a distressed squall.

Shushing him tenderly, Will manipulates his limbs into the suit as quickly as he can, and then buttons it closed. Then, cradling his neck, pulls the cap down to his brow. “Is that better? Clothes are weird as hell, considering where you’ve come from, but you’re gonna have to get used to them.”

Licking his lips, he wraps the blanket loosely around the baby, and then lifts him back into his arms.

“Secondly, I am probably going to fuck up a lot. I’m going to try very hard not to, but I really don’t know how this father and son thing is supposed to go,” he admits, the corners of his mouth turning into a thoughtful frown. “You’re probably going to have questions, about my father, and hopefully we raise you to be curious enough that eventually you’re not satisfied with us just telling you that he died before you were born.” He wants his children to be curious, to explore boundaries and ask questions. He just has no idea how he’s going to be honest about answering some of their questions, especially when he still has none of the answers himself. “And I don’t know what I’m going to tell you, then, when you’re old enough to wonder why my dad was the way he was and why I’m the way I am. Because I don’t know why he was the way he was either. But I’ll do my best to not let that screw us up.”

Blinking hard, he wanders from the bedroom of the suite into the living area, and after a long look out over Central Park, slowly drops down onto the couch. He shifts the baby onto the middle of his chest, directly under his chin, and kisses the top of his head before covering it with his hand. The newborn squirms, but quickly settles when Will leans back against the couch cushions.

“Especially not… especially with you so little. And you’re gonna be little for a good long while. And I really don’t know what little boys are _supposed_ to be like, how this whole thing is supposed to go.”

Craning his head, he watches his son’s face. He’s alert, blue eyes heavily-lidded but bright, his red lips parted by his tongue. For the first time, he notices soft blue contusions on his chin and cheekbones, from the trauma of his birth.

Without warning, tears burn at the corners of his vision.

“But I’m gonna tell you what I told your sister when she was born, which is that we both have a lot of learning to do. So I promise to forgive you, no matter what you do. And love you, no matter what you do and who you turn out to be. I promise to give you everything I can, for as long as I can, and teach you everything I know, and in return all you have to do to make me happy is come home at the end of the day,” he says more fiercely than intended, ignoring the tremor in his voice. “We’ll figure the rest out together. And hopefully you won’t have to forgive me for too much.”

The infant has no response except to curl his fingers around the neck of his father’s tee shirt.

Tucking the baby into the crook of his shoulder, Will surrounds his son with as much as possible — chin to crown, arms cradling, hands laid on his back and neck, the newborn’s cheek against chest — as much to comfort himself as to soothe the baby to sleep. He doesn’t hear Mac turn off the shower, or open the bathroom door. Nor does he hear her quiet noises of discomfort as she dresses herself in black yoga pants and a nursing tank before pulling her robe over her shoulder. It’s not until she’s leaning in the doorway that he notices that she’s returned, or that he’s been crying.

“Can we call him Teddy?” he asks, emotion constricting his throat.

Smiling in such a way that one could argue conveyed wonderment, Mac crosses her arms and, very cautiously, lowers herself on the couch next to him.

“We can call him Teddy,” she whispers, leaning in close to brush the back of her finger down Teddy’s face. Loosening his grip, Will makes to hand him back to her. “No, keep holding him. He’s been listening to my heartbeat for nine months now, I’m sure he’s bored of it.”

Resting her head on his other shoulder, she places her hand atop Will’s where it rests over Teddy’s head, and then traces the spaces between his knuckles with the tip of her middle finger, over his wedding band. Emitting a squeaking yawn, Teddy stretches out before balling himself up again, his eyes fluttering closed.

“See?” she says, eyes flickering up to Will’s face. “He knows you love him.”

A weight he hadn’t realized was pressing down on him lifts, and when he takes a deep breath, he feels a pervasive calm flooding his body all the way down the soles of his feet.

“Have I told you how much I love you?”

“It’s been a few hours.”

Leaning up, she lets him kiss the smile off her face.

 

* * *

  

The alternative is letting her press her nose up against the display cases, leaving imprints of her face and fingers on glass all over the store, so Charlotte instead winds up perched on his hip, imperiously pointing to and surveying various bracelets and earrings with more poise and selectivity than one could assume of a three year old. And while Will has a notion that Mac may have been less than serious in her demands for one karat of diamond for each pound of baby, he’s relieved when he does the mental math and the weight of the bracelet, earrings, and necklace total up to more than Teddy’s birth weight.

Then he asks the Tiffany associate to bring out the butterfly necklace that Charlotte had squealed over earlier. Deciding to _not_ examine the finer lunacy of buying a toddler a three thousand dollar piece of jewelry, sets her on top of the counter, takes the pink diamond monstrosity of out of its box, and fastens it around her neck.

All in the name of preventing sibling resentment, of course.

And really in comparison to what he’s buying for Mac, the necklace is barely a line on the receipt. And he’s sure that at least one of the sales associate is going to be bought out by a tabloid reporter within thirty minutes of him leaving here, and that’s before accounting for the fact that there are probably a few photographers who’ve already been tipped off that he arrived an hour before the store opened, carrying Charlotte in her big sister shirt, so he might as well if she’s going to have to put up with the annoyance of having a celebrity father before nine in the morning. And of course it has absolutely _nothing_ to do with the way her eyes brighten in awe, jaw dropping slightly as her lips begin to shape into the widest kind of smile.

“Really, Daddy?”

“Think of it as a present from your brother. Do you want to pick something out for him?”

Expression turning thoughtful, she nods.

It takes him several minutes of kneeling next to her that he’s soon going to regret, but he manages to convince her that a silver spoon may _not_ be what Teddy wants as a birthday gift. (Will can only imagine the shit he’d catch from Leona, let alone the gossip bloggers.) He breathes a sigh of a relief when her second choice is a more pragmatic infant hair brush.

Which may also be sterling silver, but if there are any idioms about people being born with silver brushes on their heads, he’s never heard any of them.

He gives Charlotte the bag to hold as he carries her to the car; after giving a photographer a small wave, she buries her face in the Tiffany blue paper. In response, Will gives the man hiding his face behind a blocky Nikon camera a glare to be immortalized in _Star_ or _In Touch_ or whatever weekly he plans on selling the pictures to. Then he opens the door to their black SUV, tucks Charlotte into her car seat, and wonders not for the first time if they don’t need a bigger car now that they have a second child — with no regard, of course, for the fact they the car they _already_ own is a Lincoln Navigator large enough to have its own zip code, and that Charlotte loves sitting in the third row.

Then, with Charlotte safely strapped in and himself in the front passenger seat next to their driver, he starts to worry — not for the first time — about how Charlotte will react to Teddy now that he’s a real tangible baby, and not just a hypothetical that just happens to be rounding Mac’s stomach and making her lap harder and harder to sit on.

“How big is he? What color is his hair? What color are his eyes? Does he look like me? Is he gonna sleep a lot?” Charlotte clutches his hand on the elevator ride up to the maternity wing, peering up his tall form to look at him. She doesn’t notice the nervous expression on her father’s face, and doesn’t question how tightly he holds her own tiny fingers in his own. “Is he small? How small are babies? How small was I? Does he have a name yet?”

His anxiety blurs her words into an excited hum.

When the elevator doors slide open and they step out into the hallway, slowly making their way down towards the private suites, she begins to vibrate with elation. Still holding Will’s hand firmly, she skips and bounds, her clumsy uneven gait steadied by his tensed arm.

Mac hears her daughter’s chirping voice before they can open the door.

Reaching for the TV remote to mute the ACN morning show, she stiffly sits up in bed and gives Teddy a cursory once-over. The door opens in the living room, and the bottoms of Charlotte’s sneakers hit the floor with distinct _thwaps_ as her short legs carry her as quickly as they can go.

“Momma!” she shrieks.

Laughing, Mac looks down to see if she’s woken the baby, and then shushes her daughter.

“Honey, it might not be your naptime yet, but—”

“Oops.”

Mac pats the empty spot next to her. With little grace, Charlotte heaves herself up onto the mattress and folds herself into her side, pushing her hair behind ears as she leans down over her little brother until they’re almost nose to nose.

“Does he have a name now?” she whispers, her breath making the dozing baby wrinkle his nose.

Gathering Charlotte’s blonde curls in her hand, she murmurs her answer after a moment of deliberation. “Teddy.”

“Like Grandpa?” she asks, not lifting her face from the baby.

“Yes.”

“Like how I’m named after other grandpa?”

Mac finds herself laughing, for some reason. But as far as Charlotte knows, she has untold numbers of aunts and uncles and cousins (many of whom she knows will be descending on them as soon as they give the go ahead for visitors, and some of whom will be bickering over who gets to announce the birth on-air) and three women that she calls some variation of grandmother, so why wouldn’t she just think that Charlie was her grandfather?

“Charlie Skinner, yes,” she answers, chancing to look up at Will.

The expression he’s wearing is inscrutable, and so she holds his gaze.

“What’s his other name?”

She assumes that Charlotte means his middle name.

“Well, his full name is William Edward McAvoy,” Mac murmurs, blindly brushing Charlotte’s hair over one shoulder. She feels the clasp of her necklace down the side of her neck, looks down to fix it, and finds the Tiffany and Co. price tag still on the chain. Eyes rising back up to Will’s, she arches a single brow. He shrugs, shoving his hands in his pockets. “But I don’t want Daddy to get confused, so we’re going to call him Teddy.”

“Oh.”

Charlotte looks up at her, and Mac catches sight of the butterfly pendant. Any other day she might be irritated, but not today. Usually, MacKenzie worries that Will’s tendency towards extravagance will only lead to the spoiling of their daughter. But maybe she’ll just look back and remember that her father has always thought of nothing except proving his love for her in every way he could.

Charlotte is too distracted by Teddy’s fingers to notice her mother’s attentions. “Mommy, that was nice of you.”

Mac hums, cupping the butterfly in the palm of her hand — if this is what he bought for Charlotte, then what in God’s name did he buy her?

In her arms, Teddy begins to stir, tucking his hands under his chin and stretching.

“Wow. Look!” Charlotte gasps. Then, with a sober, pleading look on her face asks, “Can I kiss him?”

“Of course you can.”

Ignoring the way her abdominal muscles protest, she bends to press her lips against Charlotte’s temple. Which is the approximate moment that Charlotte notices Will lingering the doorway, watching the moment rather than participating it, looking almost afraid that he would break it if he tried to join them.

“Daddy, come sit with us.”

So, not for the first time, he does something explicitly because it’s what his daughter wanted him to do.

Watching Charlotte lean down to briefly brush a kiss on Teddy’s forehead, and then more bravely the next pass, on his cheek, Mac reaches for Will’s hand. Interlacing their fingers, she squeezes.

She has fears of her own, of course — there is hardly a period of her childhood where she does not remember being separated from at least one member of her family, somewhere that she couldn’t speak the language, or couldn’t leave the house without an armed guard, or without the threat of kidnapping. But she supposes her fears are farther away now, than Will’s are. Hers she’s been able to leave in the embassy housing in East Berlin, a rented apartment in Moscow, her room at St. Agnes’ School for Girls.

Will’s fears, she knows, will always remain much closer. Space and time make no impact on some things in life. But she has faith that they can hold their children closer, and she thinks she has faith enough for the both of them, for now.

He looks down at their joined hands. Overwhelmed for the sixth or seventh time since midnight, he lifts her knuckles to his lips.

He’ll be worthy.

He might just believe it. If only because apparently they believe it.

MacKenzie smiles, radiant and triumphant.

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks for reading!


End file.
